experience with rules-light/rules-free rpgs?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by patchwork

IThe biggest problems for heavy-rules players moving to light-rules systems, I find, is that they have a thing about boundaries and roles that has to go away for this to work. Player X has total control over Character A, Player Y has total control over Character B, and the GM (which tends not to be the term used in rules-light games) has total control over the setting, forever and ever, amen. Players will not declaim anything about the setting or NPCs because that would be interfering with the GM's prerogative; I have one player who sulks and pouts dramatically any time mind control actually works, but even if other people are less open about it, mind control is one of the things that will break a table of heavy-rules gamers. I've also seen shouting matches erupt over something as simple as putting words in another character's mouth.

This does not seem to be the case for all rules-light games. The ones I have played have had the same kind of character-control boundaries as traditional ones. Are you using "mind control" as a shorthand for "A player briefly takes control of someone else's PC or an NPC"?

I think you're actually describing something different from rules complexity which is character identification. If the game is strictly about creating a story (e.g., Microscope) and there isn't strong identification between players and characters, then it's entirely reasonable for players to control any character in play, or create new ones on the fly. But if being someone else is a significant element of the game, then being dumped out of that by someone else claiming to control the character is reasonable.

Most players of strong-identification games will take suggestions about things they haven't thought of, or things they might do. But these are suggestions, made in out-of-character speech, and the player gets to decide if they want to use them. It's just much easier that way.

I know a GM who is fond of telling his players "your character realises that..." which is OK if that is a plausible thing for them to realise. But there's one character whose personality that GM fundamentally misunderstands, and thus keeps telling the player that they've realised things the character would never think of, which causes pointless friction. The GM would be far better off describing his world more clearly, so that the players could work things out for themselves more readily.